getting dependency errors on libmysqlclient install

im getting the following error during the debian 4 install walkthrough

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libmysqlclient15-dev: Depends: zlib1g-dev but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

what i dont get is the following:
just for kicks i tried installing zlib1g-dev via apt-get and got the following

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
zlib1g-dev: Depends: zlib1g (= 1:1.2.3-13) but 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-7ubuntu1 is to be installed
Depends: libc6-dev but it is not going to be installed or
libc-dev

im running debian 4.0.... why is this referencing ubuntu?

something is very wrong and im not sure what exactly that is as im not very knowledgeable with linux... can someone lend me a hand here?

The current problem is not that no dev packages are installed, the problem is the installation of the dev packages. Your linux system seems to be broken, it looks as someone installed ubuntu packages on it so the system is a mixed up ubuntu / debian system now which causes dependency errors.

ok.. so other than just using apt-get to try and get the package, how do i fix the dependency problems? apt-get is not going to work in this case because of the messed up dependencies so mearly trying to apt-get the specific packages is not going to work.... the dependency problem and however this got messed up has to get fixed first